"Good old days"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I doubted that the concept of "the good old days" suddenly appeared in the first decade of the eighteenth century, so I did an extensive search of Early English Books Online to see if any similar phrase had been in use earlier.

I searched for "old days," "days of yore," "olden days,"  "days of old,"  "time(s) of yore," "olden  time(s)," "ttimes of old," utilizing every alternative spelling I could think of, notably "tyme(s)," "daies" and "dayes." Naturally, I expected to find some equivalent phrase, "merry days of yore," perhaps.

No luck.

Although a few exx. of "old days" (~"daies," "dayes") do refer to the past (rarely with any adjective whatsoever) the usual sense of the phrase in books published before 1700 was (one's) "old age."

Even if inconclusive, the result is striking. Not even Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" turned up.

Why the apparent development of nostalgia around 1700?  Or is the problem with EEBO?

There's at least one dissertation here for somebody.  Takers?

(Another finding:  OED has "days of yore" from 1705 (Pope); but another writer has "daies of yore" in 1648. (Was too lazy to jot down who[m].)  Since this has become by far the most frequent collocation, the citation should go into OED3.)


JL

Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
"Would the Country-Gentlemen, as in the good old Days, make their diligent neighbouring Tradesmen their Cashiers, their Ambition and Industry would increase with their Power."

    Anon., _A Short View of the Apparent Dangers and Mischiefs from the Bank of England._    (London, 1707), p.13.


Sam Clements <SClements at NEO.RR.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Sam Clements
Subject: Re: "Good Old Days"
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1821 Edinburgh Advertiser.

"Till this had been done, I would never have defiled my hands by placing the
sacred symbols in her's; and this she would have been compelled to do in
those good old days, when Church Discipline was in its pristine vigour and
activity."

Sam Clements


----- Original Message -----
From: "Baker, John"
To:
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 7:19 PM
Subject: "Good Old Days"


> From a review of An Empire of Wealth, by John Steele Gordon, in
the Wall Street Journal today:
>
> <According to Mr. Gordon, Hone's lament is the first recorded reference to
those mythical and ever-advancing "good old days.">>
>
> I'll start the bidding. From Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of
Pompeii (1834):
>
> <<'When is our next wild-beast fight?' said Clodius to Pansa.
>
> 'It stands fixed for the ninth ide of August,' answered Pansa: 'on
the day
> after the Vulcanalia--we have a most lovely young lion for the occasion.'
>
> 'Whom shall we get for him to eat?' asked Clodius. 'Alas! there
is a great
> scarcity of criminals. You must positively find some innocent or other to
> condemn to the lion, Pansa!'
>
> 'Indeed I have thought very seriously about it of late,' replied
the aedile,
> gravely. 'It was a most infamous law that which forbade us to send our
own
> slaves to the wild beasts. Not to let us do what we like with our own,
> that's what I call an infringement on property itself.'
>
> 'Not so in the good old days of the Republic,' sighed Sallust.>>
>
> But I'm sure we can do better than 1834.
>
> John Baker
>




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